wish refugees, who had settled in these
frontier towns, probably returned to Palestine to find homes in its
partially depopulated towns.

Ezekiel from distant Babylon appears to have regarded the Jews in Egypt
with considerable hope (Ezek. 29:21). But Jeremiah, who knew them better,
was keenly alive to their faults. In their despair and rage many of them
evidently rejected the teachings of the prophets and became devotees of
the Aramean goddess, the Queen of Heaven, mentioned in the recently
discovered Aramean inscription of Zakar, king of Hazrak (cf. Section
LXV:vii). Jeremiah's closing words to them, therefore, are denunciations
and predictions that they should suffer even in the land of Egypt, at
the hand of Nebuchadrezzar, the same fate that had overtaken their
fellow-countrymen at Jerusalem. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Ezek. 30)
predicted that Nebuchadrezzar would invade and conquer Egypt. In 568 B.C.
his army actually did appear on the borders of Egypt; but how far he
succeeded in conquering the land is unknown. The complete conquest of
Egypt certainly did not come until the Persian period under the leadership
of the cruel Cambyses.

VII. The Jewish Colony at Elephantine. Jeremiah and Ezekiel also refer
to the Jewish colonists at Memphis and at Pathros, which is the biblical
designation of upper Egypt. Many of the colonists who had settled there
had doubtless fled before the conquests of Jerusalem. The presence of a
great number of Jews in Egypt at a later period indicates that even at
this early date more exiles were probably to be found in Egypt than in
Babylon. Recent discoveries on the island of Elephantine in the upper
Nile, opposite the modern Assuan, have thrown new light upon the life of
these Jewish colonists. These records consist (1) of a series of
beautifully preserved legal documents written in Aramaic on papyrus and
definitely dated between the years 471 and 411 B.C. They include contracts
between the Jews residing on the island of Elephantine regarding the
transfer of property and other legal transactions. They contain many
familiar Jewish names, such as Zadok, Isaiah, Hosea, Nathan, Ethan,
Zechariah, Shallum, Uriah, and Shemaiah. They indicate that by the earlier
part of the Persian period a large and wealthy colony of Jewish traders
and bankers was established on this island. They appear to have lived in a
community by themselves, but in the heart of the city, side by side with
Egyptians, Persians